Dinner, a Love Story

How one woman cooks up daily doses of joy and togetherness (even with both parents working full-time).Bonus: Enter to win a signed copy of Jenny Rosenstrach's book, Dinner, a Love Story, and a month of recipes and shopping lists from Jenny herself.

The dinner diary. What drives a person to write down what she cooks or eats for dinner every night in a blank book? And to do this every night for 14 years and counting? The rationale I like best is this: It always bothered me that my husband, Andy, and I would spend so many of our waking hours planning for dinner only to have all traces of that meal disappear forever in 15 minutes.

When we were first married, I can remember on more than one occasion opening my eyes in bed on a Sunday morning and seeing my new husband staring right back at me, wide awake.

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The first thing he'd say was not "Good morning" or "How did you sleep?" It was "What should we do for dinner tonight?" Then the rest of the day would seem to head in one direction: the meal. Writing down what that meal was made the effort and the event itself seem less fleeting and more meaningful. Or maybe that's just what I tell myself.

But on Sunday, February 22, 1998, the very first date written on the very first page of my dinner diary, I didn't care about theories. I had one thing on my mind when I opened up the blank green book Andy had bought me for the previous Christmas: How do I make dinner happen? How could I ensure that I would never again have to endure the agonizing back-and-forth weeknight e-mail exchange that would begin around five o'clock and usually went something like this:

HIM: What should we do for dinner?

ME: I don't know. What do you think?

HIM: I don't know. What are you in the mood for?

ME: Something healthy? Salad?

HIM: Just had a big salad for lunch. Pasta?

ME: Nah, Jennifer Aniston lost 30 pounds by not eating pasta.

HIM: Well, what, then?

ME: I don't know.

HIM: Sweet.

When, by some miracle, we did decide on a meal, we'd usually have to cram in an express stop at the supermarket on our way home — and since we were in our mid-20s and therefore never leaving work before our bosses left, that meant we weren't home until after eight o'clock, by which point we'd be starving and opt for 10-minute spaghetti with Ragù Robusto instead of 30-minute ditalini with amatriciana sauce or whatever recipe had sounded good when we had flipped through Food & Wine at the beach a few days earlier. Adding to the stress, I had no confidence in the kitchen, no confidence in my improvisational abilities. I had not yet trained myself to look at a lone onion and envision Spaghetti and Caramelized Onions. I had not learned that I wasn't going to be arrested if a recipe called for smoked paprika and I had only the regular kind. I was a recipe girl; I liked to follow them to the letter.

So on that Sunday in February, in an attempt to preempt all this dinner angst, I wrote down a lineup of everything I wanted to cook that week on the first page of my blank book. Then we drew up a shopping list based on that lineup and hit the supermarket. It wasn't sexy and it wasn't necessarily original, but our plan-in-advance system worked. The day we started doing this was the day cooking and eating together started resembling the meals I grew up with, dinners that were relaxing and satisfying. So what if I had to put up with friend after friend picking up my diary from the kitchen counter and, after realizing what it was, asking, "Jenny? Is everything OK?"

Things could not have been more OK — on the food front, and beyond. I was starting to shape a theory about dinner. I found that if I was eating well, there was a good chance that I was living well, too. When I prioritized dinner, a lot of other things seemed to fall into place: We worked more efficiently to get out of our offices on time; we had a dedicated time and place to unload whatever was annoying us about work and everything else; and we spent less money by cooking our own food, which meant we never felt guilty about treating ourselves to dinner out on the weekend. And perhaps most important, the simple act of carving out the ritual, a delicious homemade ritual, gave every day purpose and meaning, no matter what else was going on in our lives.

If you've been longing to transform your family-dinner ritual, it helps to have a few rules. Here, my top four:

Rule 1: Don't force yourself to cook every night

We are no longer living in the same world in which we grew up. No one expects you to produce a hot made-from-scratch meal every night. But if you are one of those moms who find it extremely satisfying to produce a hot made-from-scratch meal for their kids, then do it when you can and let it go when you can't. (By this point in my parenting career, shouldn't I know that telling mothers not to feel guilty is like telling Paula Deen not to use butter?)

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Rule 2: Restaurants are your friends

After you've cooked a few nights in a row, reward yourself with dinner out — whether it's a ballpark frank from a vendor at the game, takeout from everyone's favorite falafel house, or a sit-down affair at the fancy Italian place. Besides giving you a break, this will give you ideas for dinner when you are back in your kitchen wishing you were at the fancy Italian place.

Rule 3: Employ the two-out-of-three philosophy

Everyone has his or her own criteria for what defines a successful family dinner. These are mine:

1. Every member of the family is accounted for and seated, facing the others.

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2. There is a wholesome meal on the table.

3. Everyone is eating (more or less) the same thing.

You may have other variables, like having the TV off and no punches or peas thrown between siblings, but the three above are the biggest for me. If I can honestly say that I've hit two of these three, then you better believe I'm marking it down in the Successful Family Dinner column. That means it counts even if everyone is at the table eating a Domino's pizza. If Mom and Dad are eating grilled mackerel while their kids are seated next to them chowing down on turkey burgers, that counts, too. If only Dad is there, but everyone is eating grilled double-cut lamb chops and kale salad, you can also feel pretty good about your dinner situation.

RULE 4: I'm not going to lie — it helps to eat good food as you do all of this

The ultimate goal (at least in my house) is to make dinner a ritual, and putting together something that you want to eat, that you are excited to eat, is going to help a lot with establishing that ritual. If you cook good food, it will build on itself. Your family will look forward to it. You will look forward to it. You will get addicted to eating well and wanting your family to eat well. Is it essential to braise an osso buco on a Tuesday night? Of course not. But is a market-fresh frittata going to be more satisfying than a frozen pizza? My hunch is yes. (And by the way, that frittata takes the same amount of time as the frozen pizza. If only my children liked eggs.)

My point is, even though the most important part of a family dinner is being together, I do not want to dismiss the role of caring about what you cook in the equation. The more you care, the more you'll cook, and the more you cook, the better you'll get, and the better you get, the more firmly the family-dinner ritual will take hold. It's probably going to be a long time before my kids recognize in a conscious way that eating a meal with someone who loves them satisfies some deep psychological need. But for now, I'm pretty sure they're psyched to show up just for the pork chops. And I have no problem with that.

Jenny Rosenstrach is the author of the award-winning blog and new book Dinner: A Love Story, which offers inspiration and game plans for the home cook at every level. Below is a letter Jenny wrote to her younger self.

A Letter to My Younger, Newly Betrothed Self

Dear Younger SELF, Congratulations on your engagement! Having been married to your soon-to-be husband for nearly a decade and a half, I can say with conviction that you've done an excellent job in choosing a life partner. I know you are worried about the little things, like Andy's inability to remember when the recycling bins need to be dragged out to the curb, but trust me, these are shortcomings that will be easily overlooked as soon as you taste his meltingly tender braised-pork ragu.

To help you get to your dinner love story even quicker, I'm going to tell you the three most important kitchen items that 15 years from now you are still going to be using and loving on a daily basis:

1. ALL-CLAD 3-QUART SAUTE PAN WITH LID Stainless wears well, looks cool, and is easy to clean. As soon as you discover the genius of a skillet dinner (like Andy's Thai-Spiced Salmon, for which, I'm sorry to say, you'll have to wait another decade), this pan becomes an absolute workhorse.

2. LE CREUSET 5-QUART ROUND DUTCH OVEN You need this pot more than any other on the list. A home without a Dutch oven filled with soup simmering on the stovetop or a piece of meat braising inside of it is not a home at all!

3. THREE WÜSTHOF KNIVES The seven-inch chef's knife will chop eight million future onions and shallots. The seven-inch serrated bread knife will come in handy for making Andy's beloved tomato sandwiches. The three-inch paring knife is essential for mincing garlic or peeling the skin off an apple in one smooth, coiling motion.